


A Line in the Sand Between You and Me

by CopperCaravan



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: And Spoilers for Blackwall, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Fenera Mahariel, Gen, Graphic Violence, Here Lies the Abyss, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-31
Updated: 2016-01-31
Packaged: 2018-05-17 07:37:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,175
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5860006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperCaravan/pseuds/CopperCaravan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mahariel is among the Inquisitor's company when they find Erimond ensnaring Wardens for Corypheus' army. While they wait for news of where the Wardens are, Mahariel drags Blackwall into the desert for a "chat."</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Line in the Sand Between You and Me

“Blackwall, with me.”

She’s not a Commander anymore, hasn’t been for several years now. And even if she were still a Commander, she’d have no authority over him and certainly not _here_. Much as they might want her to be, Mahariel is not with the Inquisition to solve Thedas’ problems (again).

Still, he slings his shield across his back and follows, without even a questioning look back at Lavellan.

If Mahariel were a different woman, she’d apologize for such a slight later, for dragging a soldier from his post without permission. But she’s not and she won’t. The Western Approach is too damned hot, too damn empty, too damned soulless for her to care anything about manners or hierarchy or even respect for her Northern cousins.  

When the two of them are properly away from camp, that’s when Blackwall chances the question.

“Are you alright?”

It’s a stupid question, the sort of question a good man asks and how can he be a good man if he’s a liar? But he is; she’s seen it. From here to the godsdamned Hinterlands, she’s seen it. She doesn’t turn around to face him when she answers, just keeps walking, knowing he’ll follow and laughing to herself that a good-hearted “Constable” is keeping pace with a callous “Commander.”

“No,” she says curtly, eying the endless ( _bloody fucking endless_ ) expanse of the desert for something, _anything_ , to gut in Erimond’s stead. “And you’re not either.”

“No,” he agrees, but he doesn’t carry it like she does. Of course he doesn’t; she hasn’t quite yet figured him out, this man who carries other men’s names, but whoever he is, they are not the same, _Dismissed Warden Commander Mahariel_ and _Warden Constable Gordon Blackwall._ Oh, the lies they could tell between the two of them would probably rival the damned Orlesian Court.

What a fucking pair they make.

 _And there we are,_ she thinks, gaze falling on an unlucky creature still far enough off to be hard to make out. Hasn’t even seen them yet. And whatever it is, whoever it is, she’s going to kill it. Bloody. _You poor bastard._

“You can help,” she says, still not turning back to him. “Or you can watch.”

“What are you going to do?”

Now she turns to face him though it’s not really him she’s talking to. The anger—the fucking rage, more like—spews out of her like she’s a shriek, like she’s burning away the soul of everything in sight with her voice. “Not much I _can_ do is there? Not with that bastard Erimond run off and my bro—my fucking comrades somewhere I can’t get to them.”

She’d given him far too little credit, she realizes, when he doesn’t back down from her tirade. He only looks at her, his eyes the eyes of a man who can and can’t understand why this is all so wrong.

He’s not a Warden. She’s known that. But he’s something—his heart far too soft and kind for the kind of work she’s done, yet his fingers calloused and hard from exactly that.

“Give my left eye to have my fingers around Erimond’s throat,” she says. “Just to have something to kill what actually deserves killing.”

And still, he only looks at her. She wonders what he’s thinking, wonders if he knows she knows he’s a liar. She wonders if he feels guilty for it—for claiming to be one of them and then seeing how they were used, watching as Wardens turned on each other and knowing he knew not a single one of their faces. Blackwall would’ve, no doubt, if he hadn’t been among the slain, but this man? This _Blackwall_? He knows nothing of the Wardens, not the pain, not the sacrifice, not the Blight or the Calling or the horror of what they’re doing now, so far from her reach. He can’t grieve for them. Doesn’t fucking have to.

It’s not fair. It’s not fair that _she_ has to see them in that armor, see them tearing each other apart, driven by their need to be better than whatever they were before the Joining. It’s not fair that _she_ has to worry, to think of every friend she has and every brother and sister in arms, off somewhere killing and dying for _nothing_ and thinking they’re doing right. It’s not fair that _she_ has to see it, has to know that those she loves are the ones at risk and all she can think about is that she can’t stop it, couldn’t stop it when it started, might not be able to stop it all.

And fucking _Blackwall_ gets to see it all as an outsider, as a man who doesn’t know a thing about their suffering, as a man who doesn’t know a soul that’s been lost or is yet to be. He doesn’t have to see their faces, their hearts; he’s blessed to see only bloodied uniforms doing unspeakable things.

For a second—a brief, but awful second—she thinks maybe she ought to kill _him._ She needs to kill something, needs to _do_ something—something violent and wrong and angry and loud—and here he is, a liar and an outsider, a man who watches but can’t possibly know the reality of what he sees.

Something holds her back—the same thing, perhaps, that’s held her back from ousting him the entire time she’s been here. The way he offered his coat to a refugee, the way he defended the mages in Redcliffe, the way he offered his sword every time she left camp, nevermind what she was going out to do. Maybe there is some compassion left in her, some care for all the poor, unlucky bastards who get caught in the middle of shit like this. Maybe.

 _But probably not,_ she decides, turning away from him and back toward her target, shambling ever closer. “You can watch then,” she says, and draws the knives from the sheaths at her back. Maybe it’s enough that he _sees_ it; maybe, whoever Blackwall is, he doesn’t have to _be_ it.

She’d never enjoyed hunting, not beyond taking pride in ensuring full bellies at camp, and later at Keep. Death is, despite her profession and her skills and her long list of conquests, not something she delights in at all. Usually. But right now... Right now, all she wants is to sink these blades into Erimond’s throat, and since he’s not here, some other sacrificial lamb will have to do. Few times has she ever been this out of control; she can count them on her hands (and remember them with exquisite and painful detail). It is lucky for her (and for whatever creature or man may have stumbled into her path) that the thing before her is Darkspawn, for when the dreadful deed is done—and dreadful it will be—she can tell herself she’d have killed it anyway. She can tell herself that, unlike the last time she was this murderously angry, there will be no real consequences.

For a few moments, she stalks the thing, lets the pull in her gut lead her along more than her eyes. She is almost reckless in her pursuit, expending more thought in how she will kill it (the line of the cuts, the depth of the plunge, the blood left behind in the sand) than in concealing her presence from it. What does she care for that when there’s no cover to be found here, among mountains and plains and rivers made only of sand? What does she care for that when she’s been tainted, condemned by the Blight for years? What does she fucking care for that when, at this very moment, Wardens are dying for naught but the whims of a Tevinter bastard and his pride? So she pushes toward it, not bothering to make use of the skills Zevran and Nathaniel spent months teaching her. She is not an assassin today, not a shadow behind an enemy or a vision slipping in and out of sight like a lingering soul. No, today she is a killer and Blackwall will watch. He will know that being made into a Warden means being made into something else: something too hard for the world and too soft for a heart, something that _hurts_. And then let him call himself a Warden in her presence, let him decide that he is just like her. She will, perhaps, make it so, if he dares to make such a claim after this.

So she lets the monster find her, lets it turn at the familiar feeling of her proximity and stare at her before she even bothers to raise her weapons in defence. She lets it charge toward her, hears _Blackwall_ call out to her in concern and she laughs, slips out of the way just as the thing swings a ragged sword at her gut.

And then she sinks her knives into its back; buries them to the hilt on either side of its spine and takes vengeful relief in the shriek that tears from its mangled, blighted throat as it falls into the sand.

_Fuck it all._

There’s no danger from it. A single Darkspawn against her? The world has thrown so much horror at her; this is nothing. The dark blood pooling and soaking into the sand. The look and smell of flesh half dead from the very start of a miserable life. The gurgle and screech of futile struggle. The world has thrown horror at her; let her throw it back.

Over and over, she slices through armour and skin and muscle, staying perched on the back of the beast long past when its resistance has ceased. She loses herself in it, forgets there is a desert full of predators and Darkspawn and soldiers around her. All that matters is Erimond. All that matters is the Wardens, _her_ Wardens, somewhere out there, fighting for their lives. And she cannot be by their side.

Not yet. But soon.

There’s a hand on her shoulder—far too heavy to be Alistair’s and who else would dare touch her? She’s up, offending hand knocked away and her knife at the throat of the foolish offender.

_Blackwall._

She’d forgotten him too.

He holds up his hands in surrender— _just me,_ he’s saying, _not going to hurt you, just trying to help._

It’s not his fault. Whoever he is, this isn’t his doing.

But it’s not his problem either, and that’s what makes her so fucking angry. What help can he offer?

Was he there, in Ostagar? When comrades newly met fell to their death from the poison of their gruesome work? When comrades never known were left to die in a field of blood for a foolish shem’len king?

Was he there, during the Blight? Watching her heart break and helping to mend it? The night she thought Alistair would die? The night Zevran thought _she_ would die?

Was he there, in Amaranthine, when she burned down a city and all those inside to save her Keep? To save her Wardens?

Was he there, in the Deep Roads, _any_ of the times her world was crumbling around her like all the old stone holding in the dark?

No. Not _Blackwall._ So she doesn’t take the hand he offers, doesn’t let him “help” her to her feet. Because he wasn’t there. This liar—this _good man_ was not there when a good man was all the Wardens needed. When he could have made the difference, when every choice she made could’ve been left to a better man with a better heart, _Blackwall_ wasn’t there.

Why does he get to be a _good man_ now? And then claim the suffering of Grey Warden?

He cannot help her.

So she keeps her knife pointed toward his throat. “You’re a lucky man, Blackwall, to have evaded the fate of the Wardens.”

Let him say the wrong thing. Let him lie to her, here, now, when there is nothing and no one to stopper her rage. Let this man admit the sin of not sharing their burden.

“Yes,” he says, and, brave or foolish, he doesn’t look away.

There was a reason, she remembers. There was a reason she didn’t just wander alone until her anger was sated, a reason she brought _him,_ of all of them.

“The Wardens are not an _idea_ ,” she spits at him. “We are people. We are dying. And _you_ stand there, unfazed by our Calling, feeding your Inquisitor bullshit about the power of will.”

“Yes,” he says again, and this time he has the decency to look ashamed.

She’s not sorry, not for a damned thing. But she does look away—from him and from the bloody result of her helplessness, heaped limp and broken in the sand. He doesn’t get to be both: a good man and a Warden. It’s not fair. So she says it as much for herself as for him.

“You’re nothing like us.”

**Author's Note:**

> The follow up is "Drinking Alone Together."  
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/5877409


End file.
